Peter Gilpin

"Condition", caricature by Spy in Vanity Fair in 1908.

Peter Valentine Purcell Gilpin (né Purcell; 12 December 1858 – 9 November 1929), known as P. P. Gilpin, was an Irish racehorse trainer. He was Champion Trainer in 1904 and his most notable winner was the filly Pretty Polly who won the Fillies Triple Crown in 1904. He also trained Comrade, the winner of the inaugural Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in 1920.[1]

He was born in 1858 at Pau, France,[2] the son of Capt. Peter Valentine Purcell of Halverstown, Carragh, County Kildare, and Agnes Maria Lethbridge, daughter of Sir John Lethbridge, 3rd Baronet.[3] He was Roman Catholic. His father died in 1864 and his mother remarried in 1866 Henry St. John Vaughan Thomas-Le-Marchant.[3][4]

He was educated at Prior Park College, Bath.[5]

In 1883, he married Amy Mary Louisa, daughter of Capt. Henry Meux-Smith.[6] He and his wife adopted the surname Gilpin as a condition of her inheriting the entailed Hockliffe Grange estate from her uncle Sir Richard Gilpin, 1st Baronet.[7] In the late 1880s, they left Bedfordshire and settled in Ireland, where he began training racehorses while living at Whiteleas near Kildare.[5]

He died in 1929 in Dunshaughlin, County Meath.[8]

  1. ^ Wright, Howard (1986). The Encyclopedia of Flat Racing. Robert Hale. pp. 106–107. ISBN 0-7090-2639-0.
  2. ^ "Births". Freeman's Journal. 21 December 1858. p. 3. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
  3. ^ a b Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107 ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. p. 2310. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1.
  4. ^ Debrett's illustrated baronetage and knightage (and companionage) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1880. p. 273. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
  5. ^ a b Watson, Alfred Edward Thomas (October 1907). "Mr. Peter Purcell Gilpin". Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes. 25 (147). Longmans, Green, and Company: 355–372. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
  6. ^ Addison, Henry Robert; Oakes, Charles Henry; Lawson, William John; Sladen, Douglas Brooke Wheelton (1910). Who's who. A. & C. Black. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
  7. ^ Burke, Bernard (1884). The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Wm. Clowes & Sons. p. 41. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
  8. ^ "Death of Mr. P. P. Gilpin". The Times. The Times Digital Archive. 10 November 1929. p. 5.